Holy Grail of Halloween Footage Found

Oh, what a wonderful day this is. One of the most amazing discoveries in the history of man is being reported over at Fangoria. Is it the Holy Grail? Jesus? Perhaps a new source of oil? NO! Even better than all those things combined!

Synapse Films’ Don May, Jr., has found nearly all the negatives John Carpenter never used for his first Halloween film. It’s been 30 years, and these things have just shown up. That is pretty amazing when you consider how fast stuff get chucked in the bin. A good number of classic Dr. Who episodes were destroyed by the BBC before they even thought about it. We got lucky this time.

Some of the footage found on these negatives is of original takes that Carpenter later re-shot. There was even one marked with the label “1981,” which may be additional footage used for Halloween‘s television debut.

Looks like we will be getting one hell of a Halloween DVD in the near future! Check out the Fango link above for even more details as to what footage is on the long-lost reels.

*Quick update: We just learned from Sean Clark, long time Halloween genius, that the footage found is just that; footage. There is no sound in any of the reels so far, since none of it was used in the final edit. I’ll be interesting to see what they plan to do with it all…